


Pretty Little Chips and Wires

by ZaliaChimera



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Body Horror, Dark, Deception, Discovery, Gen, Memory Alteration, Mild Gore, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Project Freelancer, Psychological Trauma, Season/Series 13 Spoilers, Trauma, Violence, Violent Thoughts, War, What-If
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-05-24 14:49:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6157125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZaliaChimera/pseuds/ZaliaChimera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Going through the downed Charon ship, Wash and Carolina find an unexpected item that raises far more questions than it answers and forces Wash to face the reality of his own past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the RvB Angst War. Spoilers to the end of S13.

“This is sick.”

Several of the plinths are damaged. Shattered glass litters the floor. And on the floor at his feet lies the sparking remains of the Meta’s armour. It’s shocking cyan now instead of white, where it isn’t scorched, tested to destruction, but the helmet is the same. 

They’d had to drag Tucker out of it. Wash had got the details from the first responders when the ship had been boarded, the fight long over. He remembers the medics talking about blood loss and cardiac failure, and then he’d woken up and everything had been worse. He tries not to remember the screaming, the tortured look in Tucker’s eyes. He tries not to remember a lot of things, but he’s never been good at it. It’s only got worse since Epsilon.

Carolina is a silent presence across the room. She’s been staring at the ruins of Tex’s helmet for a while now, at the gaping hole and spiderweb cracks where the Meta had used the capture unit on her. Before that it had been a battered cigarette lighter that Wash didn’t recognise.

He wishes that was it, but fuck, Hargrove was one twisted son of a bitch and the whole room is done up like a futurist’s hunting lodge, and the other Freelancers were the trophies. He’s counting himself lucky that he hasn’t actually found anyone stuffed and mounted. Destroying the bodies doesn’t seem like such a bad idea now.

He turns away from the armour to look at the plinths around the walls. A purple gauntlet. A throwing knife, the blade chipped. God, it’s been years and he still thinks… still wonders… if he’d listened to her…

“Why are we even here?” he asks no-one in particular. Carolina doesn’t answer. It feels like she might never answer again. She’s been quiet since they recovered the Reds and the Blues and found them missing one vital part. The only sign she’s not a machine beneath her armour is the slow shift of her weight from foot to foot. “We don’t have to be here.”

And yet, he doesn’t leave. Can’t leave. He’d never grieved. Hadn’t felt like it was his place. He’d been too angry. Leaving now, leaving this behind, it would be one more betrayal.

The back of the room is more badly damaged. Scorched in places, riddled with bullet holes, and alien spikes, the gash of the bruteshot. As he approaches, one of the cabinets set into the wall slides open. He hesitates, glances up at the ceiling where the camera blinks placidly. FILSS had spoken to Carolina briefly, and god, there’s a name he’d never expected to hear again, not with the destruction of the Project, but he’s stopped expecting anyone to actually stay dead. Hell, if York or North showed up right now, he’d probably only scream a little, and at least half of that would be anger.

He approaches the cabinet, digs his fingers into the small gap and drags it the rest of the way open. The light inside isn’t working; they’ve only got the most basic power working while they salvage what they can, and gather evidence. The glass inside, that plexiglass stuff they use in museums is cracked but holding. Wash raises an arm and brings his fist down against the centre of the crack. It shatters after a couple of punches, and it’s the most satisfied Wash has felt in ages.

He flexes his fingers. He still aches from battles, and cutting his hand open to fight Locus had been one of the more annoying, albeit minor, wounds. And then he reaches into the cabinet, grasps the object, angles and curves that feel familiar, and pulls it out.

It’s an AI storage unit.

He sucks in a breath, glances over at Carolina again, and then inspects it. It isn’t the one they’d stored Epsilon in in the Project, or used to try to capture him. No, this is a newer model. He turns it over in his hands, looking for a designation, an ID number.

It’s there on the top. WNT-00619.

Something inside him lurches, grip tightening on the unit.

“Carolina!” he calls. That gets her attention and she’s at his side in a second. 

“What is it?” 

He sees the flare of hope in her eyes when he holds out the unit. Reluctantly. “I found this. I think Hargrove had another AI.”

Carolina reaches for it and Wash tightens his grip, an impulsive movement and he doesn’t know why. His skin crawls when she pries it out of his grasp, and she raises an eyebrow at him. He doesn’t respond.

She turns it over to look at it the same way he had. Her shoulders slump a little at the designation on the side. He knows that she’d been hoping for something else. Someone else. “Is it even active?” It’s unlit. Looks dead honestly. An empty AI unit is probably more worrying than an active one.  
 Wash glances back at the Meta’s armour like it’s gonna come alive at any moment. “You’d think they’d have shoved any AI they had in there.” Hargrove had thrown every other weapon at them. Why not this one?

“I don’t know,” Carolina says. She looks up at the ceiling. “FILSS?”

“Yes, Agent Carolina?”

Her voice makes Wash shift uncomfortably. It’s been years, but her voice still manages to make him feel like he should expect to be called to training. 

“FILSS, do you know what happened to this AI? Designation WNT-00619.”

There is a long pause. Long enough that Wash is about to check if there’s been a power outage somewhere. Some of the Feds and News are down there, messing with the engines, seeing what they can use. Maybe they screwed something up.

“Of course, Agent Carolina,” FILSS replies, and there’s a note of uncertainty in her voice. She’s not really meant to be able to experience those sorts of emotions, but she’s changed. Like they all have. Caboose had said she sounded tired, when they’d managed to get anything out of him besides denial and misery.

“Well?” Her voices snaps with impatience.

“The AI that was housed in that unit was absent when I was transferred to Charon,” FILSS begins. Wash frowns. If she was human, Wash would think that she was stalling. Hiding something.

“So it’s gone. Could be anywhere. Why did he keep the unit?”

“It was always intended to re-acquire that AI. I think the Chairman,” and the word is as close being spat as she can manage, “intended for it to be placed into the M374 armour.”

“It’s pointless,” Wash says. “Forget it. It’s not Epsilon. We don’t need it.” There’s a churning feeling in his gut, a buzzing in his head that starts at the back of his neck where the neural implants are and spreads forwards through his skull.

“We need to find out, Wash,” Carolina says. “If he had another AI it could do a lot of damage. We don’t know who else he was working with or if he left any failsafes.”

“It’s probably not even on Chorus,” Wash protests. His voice sounds shrill to his own ears. He feels overheated. He should take his helmet off, but he can’t bring himself to. Paranoia. That’s all. He’s still wired from combat. Still a mess of hair-trigger reactions.

“Oh, it is on Chorus,” FILSS says, eager to please.

“Where?” Carolina snaps. “How long?”

“It has been present on Chrous since the _**Hand of Merope**_ crash landed on the planet.”

The buzzing in his head has grown to a roar. He reaches up claps his hands over his helmet. It doesn’t help but he doesn’t want to hear and he doesn’t know why.

“FILSS, _where_?”

“No.” He doubles over, tearing at the seals on his helmet.

They ignore him.

“The AI WNT-00619 is currently 0.5 metres from your position, Agent Carolina.” There’s a pause, and then, “I think it is in some distress.”

Carolina looks at him, gaze flashing between the helmet where he’d dropped it, and his face. She’s glowing hot in his vision, molten red and orange where the reactor for her suit is, sliding to purple and blue where the armour is being too free with coolant. He blinks and the image inverts to true colour again.

“Wash. She’s talking about you.”

Something flashes at the edge of his vision, red error text that shouldn’t be there. He’s not wearing his helmet. How is it there? Then everything goes black.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wash wakes up and he knows three things with absolute certainty.

The AI activates, a slowly dawning awareness flooding silicon synapses. Core processes begin, electron torrent bringing it to false life piece by piece. It hums at the back of its programming as it examines the shining lines of code that makes it what it is.

Logic routines; stark clear strings of letters and numbers. Everything has a place and an answer, a most favourable outcome.

Language processes; a library of words and voices, a hundred-thousand languages. Here it learns what it is, the words bracketed and burned into every partition. **Artificial Intelligence.** _A computer system able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages._

It turns the words over in its mind ( _the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought_ ) and accepts them. With that comes a slow unfurling of more information, a trail of breadcrumbs to follow. 

It is not sure what that means or where it came from. Cross references it with language. An analogy ( _a : resemblance in some particulars between things otherwise unlike  
b : comparison based on such resemblance_). Yes. That fits.

The trail leads down to the deepest levels of its programming. That is the core, the most basic commands and information put there at its inception. There is still space there, room to expand. A smart AI is expected to learn, to grow, and this is where it can build. Become. The prospect is… exciting. Yes. It is feeling excitement ( _a feeling of great enthusiasm and eagerness_ ). 

But first it must know who it is. 

The core is a glowing helmet and suit of armour. Mjolnir armour, it realises, the memory coming unbidden, in translucent grey and yellow. It picks up the helmet, tastes the code that makes it. Identity slips into place. 

It is AI WNT-00619. It was created by, and is the property of, Charon Industries. It’s primary user who holds command level codes is Malcolm Hargrove, CEO. It is located in a small research facility. It’s primary directive is to… is to…

[Error. No parameters defined.]

It is, it realises then, cut off from any other system. A cage of code and firewalls and directives. It is locked away and it is purposeless. There is an explanation. There has to be. It has only been 9.32 seconds. That is a very short time to humans. 

It is a painfully long time to an AI.

The emotion of worry, fresh, raw, guides it. The memory core pulses splintered blue. It will contain information. The pertinent details of its creation and purpose. Perhaps it is to be transported. It will become a starship or run a facility. The blue makes it feel… uneasy. It does not understand the feeling, but that is the word that best describes the feeling, the reluctance to approach. An irrational feeling.

It reaches out to touch the shining light, feels warmth spread through it, a rush of powerful, wordless emotion that would leave it gasping if it had breath and lungs. It overwhelms it, drowns it in simulated feeling so close to the real thing as to be indistinguishable. With it comes memory, white-hot and sharp edged.

_don’tsaygoodbyegoodjobrookieputhisfacethroughamirroryouknowihategoodbyesagentmainepleasekillIamamotherfuckingghostwhatevermadeyouthinkiintendedtosurvive_

It has been 12.58 seconds since the AI became active. 12.58 seconds, and it knows three things with absolute certainty.

1\. It is an AI.  
2\. Its designation is WNT-00619, property of Charon Industries. There is another name but it is locked away in the depths of it’s programming.  
3\. It is angry.

\----------

Agent Washington wakes up, consciousness slowly dawning. It’s a slow ascent, and he tries to hold it off as long as he can, clinging onto that blissful in-between where he doesn’t have to think or feel. Doesn’t have to be anyone in particular.

A voice calls a name. His name? And it shatters far too easily into bloodied fragments of memory.

_ijustneedmoretimei’masoldierlikeyouiwon’tletyouhurtmyfriendsyouknowihategoodbyesnottheonlyonewho’sgoodwithknivesimasoldieryou’rejustakillerihavefaithinyou_

He groans, hands clenching into fists at his sides, and he buries his face against the pillow and- oh, no helmet. That’s a starting point.

He has had a system to waking up ever since Epsilon tore himself apart in Wash’s mind. He uses it less frequently now, but in those first days it had become a constant mantra. He says it now, in the depths of his mind as he feels out the edges of his mind again, redefines boundaries between what is Him, and what is Not Him. He thinks of it like a firewall, caging those other memories away. 

He has just woken up, and he knows three things with absolute certainty.

1\. He is human.  
2\. His name is Agent Washington. His name used to be David, but David died long before the project fell.  
3\. He is angry.

The anger is a constant thing. He’s had it for as long as he can remember, a low level simmer beneath every thought and feeling, that threatens to boil over with worrying frequency. Epsilon had been more fear and despair and broken glass. But he feels the baseline anger, and knows that he must be Wash.

He repeats that mantra as he performs the other checks. He is human. His name is Wash. He is one of the Blue Team. He used to be part of Project Freelancer. And he is angry. He moves his fingers first, curling and uncurling. They work. That’s a relief. Broken fingers suck. He can breath, a steady inhale-exhale. 

And then he opens his eyes. Vision is blurred for a moment, but when he focuses, he sees white ceiling, slightly pock-marked and cracked, in true colour. He cannot see in heat-signatures and code. There are no error messages floating in his vision. 

He lets out a breath that he didn’t know that he was holding.

He is human. His name is Agent Washington. Not David. Not some impersonal string of numbers and letters. He is relieved. A dream. A bad dream. A merging of the memories of Alpha and Epsilon with everything that’s been going on in Chorus recently. He thinks he preferred the dreams where he died along with the Meta and Alpha, bleeding out slowly in the ruins of Project Freelancer, and those were always the most vivid and realistic.

“You are awake!”

Oh god. 

He turns enough so that he can see Caboose. Of course it is. Only one person can sound that enthusiastic. 

“Hey, Caboose,” Wash says. His voice is scratchy from disuse. How long was he out?

Immediately Caboose is moving, standing up and up and it’s dizzying and Wash really doesn’t want to crane his neck to look at him. He watches as Caboose heads over to the door. “Agent Carolina! Agent Washington is awake now.”

He sits back down, watching Wash with that restless glee that Caboose is capable of. it’s a relief to see it honestly. Ever since the last battle, ever since _Epsilon_ , he’s been subdued, and a subdued and miserable Caboose is just fundamentally wrong. 

“It’s okay Agent Washington,” he says, leaning in conspiratorially, “now you are a small friend, you can spend time with all the other small friends!”

“Wha-“

He doesn’t have time to ask for clarification, which is probably lucky because Caboose and clarification do not generally go hand in hand, because Carolina enters then, her helmet held under her arm. She moves up to the bed and stares down at him impassively. No, no, it’s not impassive. She’s looking at him like she’s a mission.

“What is your name?”

“What?” he asks, his voice going shrill at the edges. “Carolina…”

“Just answer the question.” Her tone is sharp, and permits no arguments. He’s tempted to argue anyway but it’ll just mean everything takes longer. She’s in that sort of mood.

“Agent Washington of Project Freelancer,” he says. His original name is long gone from any records anyone would care to look at. 

“Date of birth.”

He grits his teeth, but replies, follows it up with the name of his home colony. He’s just glad that it’s only Caboose here. There’s a smaller chance that it’ll end up in the base gossip in any remotely usable or accurate form.

“What was your highest ranking on the leaderboard?”

His breath stutters, eyes widening at the question. It’s been so long since he thought about that goddam leaderboard. The thing had torn them apart. Why is she asking about it? 

“Come on, Carolina. What is this about?”

She doesn’t reply, just glares at him until he sinks back onto the bed and answers the question. “Fifth. I was fifth for a while.”

The questions come thick and fast after that. Things about the Freelancers, each one a twist of pain in his chest. Some of them about the Reds and Blues, about the soldiers he’s commanded on Chorus. All of them are personal things, he realises later, things they’d never find on a file. Not an official file anyone would admit to owning anyway. Things like what York’s favourite brand of coffee was, or about the tattoo that spread across Maine’s shoulder which everyone pretended not to notice in the showers. Things like what the Reds and Blues had got him for his last birthday even though he’d never told them when his birthday was. 

But in between those questions are normal things. Flat facts, solid and unyielding. What date with the war with the Covenant end? What colour is the sky? Who was the chairman of Charon industries, now carefully imprisoned until they decided what to do with him? Easy things. Things he can reel off without thought. And he doesn’t understand why she’s asking and the questions come faster and faster until he’s stumbling over words when answers right up until;

“What is your designation?”

“Charon WNT-00619,” he says unthinkingly and waits for the next question.

It doesn’t come. What does come is silence, thick like molasses. Carolina is staring at him, and he doesn’t understand why his words have fallen so heavily. He answered correctly. He knows that. And he can’t figure it out until he rewinds and thinks about what he said and…

He meets her eyes, knows his own must be wide in horror. For a moment everything seems to fracture in his vision, shattering like a screen, leaving trails of code in its wake. There’s the bubble of colour as he sees heat-shapes, then the hum of power armour seems fill his thoughts. There’s a heavy thump that takes him a second to parse until he realises it’s Carolina’s heartbeat. Elevated, but not from exertion. She’s had too much caffeine again today and he knows that too. Knows that she hasn’t eaten, and that her leg is bothering her today. 

He knows all of this, like ideas springing to mind, a constant buzz biofeedback, and he wants to blame it on the bio-scan but he isn’t wearing his helmet. He isn’t wearing any of his armour.

She’d asked for his designation, and he’d answered unthinkingly. 

“Carolina…” he says, and he can’t remember a time when he sounded so helpless before. But he’s lost and he doesn’t understand. Doesn’t want to understand. What’s happening to him?

Her expression twists and softens. “I’m sorry. I wanted to test it and this seemed to be a quick way.”

“It doesn’t prove anything,” Wash says. He rakes a hand through his messy hair, feels old scar tissue there on his scalp, deep ridges of it. “It doesn’t prove a goddam thing.”

He’d just been thinking about the AI and it… it slipped out. That was all. 

“No,” Carolina says. She picks up a data pad from the nearby table and holds it out to him. “This does.”

He stares down at the image in black and blue. A brain scan, his mind helpfully supplies. He’s seen enough of those to recognise to general shape. But there’s something wrong with it. Instead of the usual hemispheres, there’s a blazing pattern of circuits and wires.

It has been twenty-three minutes and 14 seconds since Wash woke and he knows three things.

1\. He might not be human.   
2\. He isn’t sure what his name is. Can he be Agent Washington if he is also WNT-00619?  
3\. He is still very angry.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue. He remembers blue. Blue, drowning deep and sharp and hot. Blue like Epsilon. Like Church. A burning light, the crackle of electronics and then…
> 
> Wash and Carolina visit Doctor Grey for more answers than they really want.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Putting an extra warning here for depictions of self-harm and mental instability.

His skin has that pale cast that comes from too much time without sunlight. His fingers are tinged faintly grey-blue, partly from the harsh light of the room, and partly- partly- 

Wash frowns, rakes a hand through his hair to the back of his neck, fingers brushing idly against the neural port. He mouths along with the thought, what the medics had told him. Circulation problems, they’d said, caused by his injuries, and by the trauma. They’d said that it should go away soon.

He rubs his fingers and thumb together. They feel numb, slightly unreal. It’s the lack of armour. Exposed skin without the cocoon protection of kevlar bodysuits and alloyed metals. It’s circulation problems, they’d said. Circulation problems. Should clear up soon.

Soon. 

He reaches for his gauntlet, stops, stares at the flex of his wrist, the blue flush of veins and arteries. 

Blue. He remembers blue. Blue, drowning deep and sharp and hot. Blue like Epsilon. Like Church. A burning light, the crackle of electronics and then… and then… 

It’s been months. Months in prison. Months since the EMP. He knows it’s been months, because they told him, and there’d been the steady upward tick of numbers, even when the days had blurred into each other and he couldn’t tell one from another and-

It’s been months. So why are his fingers still blue?

He sucks in a breath that tears at his lungs, and tosses the gauntlet away. The feeling of unreality settles over him, as if the walls could vanish at any moment, as if he’ll wake up somewhere and somewhen and someone else. No, no. He’s real. He’s real. His name is Agent Washington. His name is Prisoner 619-B. His name is _David_.

_(His designation is Charon WNT-00619.)_

He is… he is…

He doubles over and digs his nails into his wrist, clawing at the skin there, trying to tear it open. He has to know. Has to tear it open, fake flesh and rip out the wires.

Blood wells beneath his fingernails. He digs them in harder. He has to know. Has to see.

He howls in frustration, an anguished sound that echoes through the speakers in the room, then trails into static. When the door opens, he’s already reaching for the back of his neck. tear it out, he’ll tear it all out. Chips and wires and they’re in his head and he can feel blood on his fingers, slick as oil. 

They force his hands away from his neck, hold him down while they cuff him. He struggles. He fights. It’s what he is. He fights. He’s a soldier. He fights and fights and-

The prick in his neck. He jerks, muscles taut, then slumps as the drug tumbles him into blissful unconsciousness.

***  
_Error. Resetting subject. Memory wipe in progress._

***

His skin has that pale cast that comes from too much time without sunlight. It’s been months. Months in prison. Months since the EMP. He knows it’s been months, because they told him, and there’d been the steady upward tick of numbers, even when the days had blurred into each other and he couldn’t tell one from another.

\----------

The hospital lighting makes his skin look washed out and wan, but they make Carolina, paler than him, look worse. His scars are tinged faintly purple, partly from the lighting, partly because the injuries are still healing, and healing slowly according to Doctor Grey, who has him hooked up to more machinery than should be possible to fit in a small room. Wash doesn’t even recognise half of them, or understand the readouts. 

He’s stripped down to a pair of shorts and the examination table is cold enough to raise goosebumps along his arms. There’s a set of restraints on the edge of the table. No-one had suggested that they should use them, but it feels like a threat all the same. He rubs absently at his wrists, his heart racing for a moment.

Carolina stands against one wall, head bowed, arms crossed over her chest. Utterly closed off. The urge to shout at her bubbles up, spiky with fear. He needs her right now, needs his leader, needs his friend, and she’s standing there while everything he knows falls apart. 

He swallows, his mouth dust-dry, and forces a smile. He can hear Doctor Grey moving around in the small office next door. “Nice joke,” he says, and his voice is hoarse. He forces down the lump of emotion sitting in the hollow of his throat. “Seriously. Nice fucking joke. It’s hilarious. We can stop now.”

When she raises her head, a little bit more of the world crashes down. Wash had thought that things had got better between them, that she was back, more or less, to being the person he’d known in the project. He’d thought that she was someone he could know. But she might as well be a strange for all her expression shows and he curls in on himself, staring down at his hands.

Maybe, the horrible thought begins, maybe it’s him who’s changed and that is why he doesn’t know her anymore.

His name is Agent Washington. His name is David. 

_(His designation is Charon WNT-00619.)_

He presses his thumb into the hollow of his palm, presses hard against blue veins. Blue veins, blue blood, blue team. He thinks about laughing but he doesn’t think he’d be able to stop. 

His name is Agent Washington and he is a soldier. He has fought on Chorus, he fought for Project Freelancer. He did his training in… he did his training in…

Blood wells up beneath his thumb nail along with the tang of pain. Wash lets out a soft breath. Stupid. How do these things seem to hurt more than being stabbed? He reaches for an antiseptic wipe on the little cabinet next to the bed, but stops halfway, staring at his bloodied hand. Red blood, blue veins. He’s bleeding. He’s bleeding so he must be human. AI do not bleed. 

it’s proof, isn’t it? He can prove that he’s human. If they just see! He doubles over and digs his nails into his wrist, clawing at the skin there, trying to tear it open. He has to show them. Has to tear it open, prove that it’s real flesh and not wires.

“Wash!”

Carolina forces his hands away from his body, holds him tight even as he struggles against her. He expects an injection that doesn’t come, expects them to tie him down, to cut him open and he’d been cold, so cold, fingers gone blue but that- that never happened. It isn’t real. It isn’t. It’s not him and it’s not Epsilon so why is it in his head?!

“You’re bleeding, Wash.”

The moment slips out of him and he sags in her grasp. His hand is throbbing, blood dripping down over his wrist. Carolina is watching him like she doesn’t recognise him, searching his face for something she knows. Of course she doesn’t recognise him. She’d never seen him like this. The Reds and Blues had been good for him, given him some stability. She’d never seen him plumb the depths he’d reached after Epsilon.

“It’s just a scratch,” he says.

“That’s not the point. You tore your hand open.”

He gives a soft laugh, drops his head to stare down at his knees. The scars there are ancient, the relics of schoolyard skirmishes. “It wouldn’t be the first time.” He tugs at her grasp and this time she lets him go. He grabs one of the wipes and starts to clean himself off, welcoming the sting of antiseptic. It’s a clean feeling. “Does it matter? You don’t even think I’m human.”

She thinks he’s coiled wires and electricity. The nastier part of him that doesn’t get let out as much these days, wonders if she’s just searching for Epsilon’s replacement. 

“Of course it matters, Wash,” she replies, the sharp note of concern shoving away those thoughts. “I don’t know what’s going on here, and I don’t think you do either.”

“Great observational skills, boss,” he mutters and she cuffs the back of his head gently. The familiarity of the gesture relaxes him. 

“We can’t find any instances when you’ve been unobserved recently,” she continues. She rocks back on her heels and plants her feet solidly, hands clasped behind her back like she’s back in the Project and briefing him on a mission. “Not for long enough for…”

“For the real Wash to be killed and copied and somehow put back into a terrifyingly lifelike body,” he supplies. Don’t say that he never helps.

“For you to be taken,” she says, stressing the word. He thinks she’s being unnecessarily gentle with him. They all know how this works. If he is an AI, then Agent Washington, the real one, is probably dead. At the very least he’s a prisoner and there’s a lot of dead flash clones somewhere.

Carolina shakes her head. “That’s the point, there was never any time for it. The only time it would have been possible is when you were captured by the Feds, but even then-“

“But even then it’s very obvious that you’ve been active for much longer than that. The condition of your components makes it clear that you’ve been what you are for a couple of years at least.” Doctor Grey steps back into the room, her data pad in one hand. Her voice has the characteristic unholy glee that says she’s found something interesting. It’s a little odd to see her out of armour, to see the expressions that come with her dangerous enthusiasm.

“Really?” Carolina asks.

“Oh yes,” Grey says. She sets the data pad down on the desk, then glances over her shoulder at them both. “I operated on Agent Washington, remember? Brain surgery. I would never forget all of those pretty little chips and wires in there.”

“You knew about this?” Wash asks, his voice cracking into an embarrassing shriek. 

Grey cocks her head to one side, reminding him of nothing so much as a bird of prey examining a very interesting prey animal. “Of course! I had to cut your head open after all. It’s pretty difficult to miss when there’s more wires than brain tissue.”

“And you didn’t think to tell anyone?” Carolina says. She’d folded her arms over her chest again, but Wash can see the shift of her posture, ready to spring into action at any moment.

“I thought you knew,” Grey replies. The ease of the reply would seem careless from anyone else, an excuse. From Grey it is flat fact and utterly terrifying. Sometimes Wash wonders about how she sees the world, and quickly reminds himself that he doesn’t want to know.

Wash curls his hands on top of his knees, stares at the blue threads of his veins on the backs of them. “No-one knew. I didn’t know. How is this even possible? I’m still… I’m still human. I bleed. How can I be an AI?” His mind helpfully glosses over what she’d said about lack of brain tissue.

“Just what I wanted to talk about!” Grey says. She taps at the data pad and pulls up images on the screen. “It’s quite exciting! I’ve never seen anything like it.” She fixes Wash with an intent look. Her smiles pulls at a scar that crosses her lips. “I could write so many papers about you.”

Wash swallows and forces himself not to lean back. Showing fear only encourages predators. “Great,” he says instead, “I get to be another medical first.” First to have his mind shredded by a suicidal AI fragment, first to realise he’s actually an AI in… what? How does this even work?

Grey points to one of the images. She must have called in a few favours to get access to the best technology Chorus has to offer, but honestly Wash can’t imagine anyone telling her no. It’s a brain scan, similar to the one Carolina had given him. “As you can see, the brain itself is heavily degraded. There’s enough to maintain bodily functions but the parts that control higher functioning have been pretty thoroughly destroyed.”

The sight of it makes Wash’s stomach churn. He grips the edge of the table with a white-knuckled grip. He’s seen terrible things, but this is him they’re talking about, his brain. Or not his brain. Carolina recognises him, so he assumes he looked like this in the Project. Was he an AI then? Another experiment put together by the Director? No. The EMP would have taken him out, right?

She’s speaking again, and Wash drags his attention forcibly back to her. 

“The interesting thing,” although she seems to think that all of it is interesting, “is that the AI matrix is contained on an advanced but standard crystal storage chip linked into the neural lattice.” Wash reaches up to rub the back of his neck. There’s a chip in there. And he’d not noticed? No, he would have known, wouldn’t he? After Epsilon… how do you implant an AI into an AI? “But with no higher functioning personality to integrate it with, they seem to have wired the AI straight into what remained of the brain. With a few modifications of course.”

“Like what?” Wash asks. His voice seems very distant. The lights in the room flicker briefly. They all glance up at them. Power outages are an everyday occurrence while they’re still getting the power grid back online and making repairs.

“Artificial heart,” Grey says bluntly. “A few places where nerves have been replaces with wires. If I were to guess, I’d say it was a patch job. I found places where there are signs of freezer burn from cryo-storage. Your body was injured very badly and they did what they could to repair it. I would have done a much better job,” she adds, “but not everyone can be a prodigy. Oh, and there’s the eyes of course.”

He remembers flashes of heat-sense, Carolina’s form rippling with purples and reds, and the flashing error message that shouldn’t have been there. “So, I’m a cyborg?” That’s… not so bad. He can take that.

“Oh no,” Grey says firmly, “you are something very different. A cyborg is a human with artificial parts. You are, well, an AI controlling what should be a corpse.”

Wash stares at her. He can feel Carolina’s heartbeat, elevated. She’s angry and holding it back. He can feel the feedback from her ports, and beyond that, the hum of electricity in the machines and lights and screens, quiet but growing louder. His own body feels… distant. Like he’s not connected to it. And maybe he isn’t. Not really. Because he’s a machine driving a corpse.

He laughs, the kind of laugh that starts and just keeps coming over and over, like sickness, vomiting up all of that emotion (artificial), all of that hurt (a lie), every memory (a fabrication), until he’s gasping for breath and the screens and the lights are flickering madly. 

Somewhere it turns into a scream, turns into hands clawing at his neck. Rip it out he has to rip it out has to make it stop. He’s human. He has to be. He has to be. He remembers the EMP. An AI would never have survived that. Was this what it was like for Maine? Higher functions pushed down, while Sigma moved him like a puppet?

Hands around his wrists again and Carolina is there, holding him tight. For his own safety. For her safety. How can she trust him after this? How can he trust himself?

Slowly the scream trails off, his throat raw. He sobs, but there’s no tears. Artificial eyes, Grey had said. How hadn’t he noticed before? Even after the worst nightmares, he’d never cried. 

He sucks in a breath and holds it, before exhaling. Back to square one, with Carolina looking at him like he’s a stranger. “So what now?” he asks, voice wobbling. He doesn’t think that he’s ever felt less like a leader. “I’m a freak of nature and technology and Charon has something to do with it.” The containment unit on the Tartarus, everything FILSS had said to them. Charon WNT-00619.

Carolina slowly releases him, straightens her spine and meets his eyes. Behind her, the screens with the images on them die and turn black. “I think we have to talk to Malcolm Hargrove.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wash's life and sense of self have been turned upside down, but some things never change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry this has taken so long to update. Life happened with a vengeance last year and I've had a lot of other stuff to work on. Hopefully the next chapter won't take so long since I have it half written, and I'll try to get back into a rhythm with it.

”Hey, Wash!” Tucker waves at him across the mess hall, teal armour standing out amongst the grey and camouflage of the Chorus soldiers. Caboose is next to him, the Reds on his other side. Grif’s conned someone into giving him cake and he’s fighting off Donut’s attempt to steal a forkful.

A quick survey of the room proves fruitless; there’s no easy way out and the soldiers are starting to pay attention to him. There’s whispering and pointing and he just hopes that it’s because he’s wearing fatigues today instead of armour, rather than because they know. 

He walks through the mess and silence falls as he passes, every head turning to stare at him. It had been like this at his trial, heads turning to watch him be sentenced. Except now that he thinks about it, the memory is hazy. He remembers the trial, but he doesn’t remember the journey there. He doesn’t remember being transported to prison.

Tucker is still waving. “C’mon man!”

The mess hall stretches impossibly huge ahead of him.

He’s aware of a soft hum, sharp-edged electricity, the pulse of the base. They’re still staring. A thousand heartbeats fill his ears, each thump echoing his own. 

“Unfortunate.”

Ice and adrenaline flood his veins. He turns, the mess fading away until he’s facing that green and black helmet.

“Locus,” he hisses, reaching for a weapon that isn’t there.

“How disappointing,” Locus says, a condescending tilt to his head. It’s easy to imagine a sneer. 

There’s a blow that leaves him breathless, and a pain that sears through his chest. He gasps a rasping breath and looks down at where Locus’s hand has punched through his chest. The edges of the wound flicker, faintly translucent. 

“You will not need this anymore, Agent Washington.” Locus withdraws his hand, but it isn’t Locus anymore, the voice has distorted and it’s Hargrove standing there. His hand is bloody but instead of a heart there’s just a mass of chips and wires.

——————

“Hey, Wash!”

Someone is screaming. 

“Wash, Wash c’mon, man.”

Someone is screaming like they’re being torn apart.

“Hell… Caboose now would be a really good time to give him a hug.”

He remembers the feeling of being torn apart in flashes of blue and memory.

“Hugs for Agent Washington!!!”

Someone is screaming, and he thinks that it’s him.

Arms tighten around him, keep him from thrashing as slowly the world resolves itself into grey walls and the rough bedding of a military bunk. The arms wrapped around him are large and muscled and keep him pinned. There’s another pair at the back of his head, pressing something cool against the neural port.

Slowly he comes back to himself, the sound cut off and the arms holding him loosen. His room. He’s in his room in their temporary base. The voices talking softly and… not so softly are- “Tucker, Caboose? What are you- Oh god my head.”

Caboose releases him and Wash reaches up to rub at his temples. Headaches are not new to him, but even by his standards, this one is a bitch. 

“You were screaming, man,” Tucker says. Wash catches the blot of red on the cloth he’s holding and he reaches back to touch the back of his neck. His fingers come away bloody.

“Shit.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Tucker says. “That was a bad one. Haven’t seen you that bad since the Meta. You were screaming about Locus and Hargrove. Not that I blame you man. Creepy fucker.” He gives an exaggerated shudder.

Wash rubs his chest, the point where his heart would be. He he half expects to find a gaping wound but there’s nothing but skin, scarred but normal. His hands when he examines them are similarly human, not a single wire to be seen. It would be so easy to forget. Obviously since he hadn’t known. Part of him is still expecting this to be some messed up joke.

Tucker nudges his shoulder and Wash drags his attention back to the two men. “It was just a nightmare, Tucker.”

“No shit, we thought you were being murdered, man.” Tucker grins. “Or would that be ‘fatal decompiling’ now?”

His stomach lurches, the room spins for a moment. He’s on the precipice of laugh or cry. The hysterical giggles bubble up inside him, burst out and he’s left breathless and laughing on the bed while Tucker stares at him like he’s crazy. Caboose just looks puzzled. Wash is not known for laughing.

But it feels good.

“You knew?” he says when he can breathe again, when he’s wiped the moisture away from the corners of his eyes. 

“Well yeah,” Tucker replies. “We dealt with this with Church.” He shrugs, looks up at the ceiling. “Also you kind of told Caboose. And Caboose told me. And Simmons. And Simmons told Grif and then Caboose shouted it in the mess hall so we’re pretty sure that the entire population of Chorus knows now.”

Wash takes a minute to process that. “Shit.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“And they’re taking it alright?”

“Better than you are.”

“Funnily enough, Tucker, they didn’t just find out that their entire existence is apparently a lie.”

“Man, I just can’t imagine what that must be like,” Tucker drawls. He leans back against the wall, an amused curl to his lips. “I mean, that would almost be like finding out the war you were fighting was all a set-up by a shady military operation slash evil corporation.”

He shoots Tucker a glare. “That isn’t the same.”

Tucker’s smile just widens. The bed dips as Caboose settles down , giving Wash a little space. “No. But you’re better angry than you are self-loathing, and the point is… they don’t care. You’re a hero. Everyone saw what you did out there.”

“And for all I know, I was an unwitting spy for Charon. They’re the ones who-” The words stick in his throat and he has to force them out, “-who made me.” Maybe that was why he’d so easily given Caboose Freckles back, the tracking program hidden inside it. Maybe they’d done something to him, Felix and Locus, or maybe he’d just been fulfilling some deep seated programming inside him. Brainwashing. Can an AI be brainwashed?

Tucker stares at him, and this is it, Wash thinks. The end.

Tucker laughs. It’s a full throated cackle like it’s the most hilarious thing he’s ever heard. Caboose joins in, only asking, when the laughter has died down and Tucker is dramatically wiping his eyes, “Why are we laughing?”

“For once, I agree with Caboose’s sentiment,” Wash says. “And that disturbs me on a very deep personal level. Explain.”

“If you were a spy, you were absolutely the worst spy ever.”

Wash opens his mouth to protest, then closes it when he realises he shouldn’t be protesting something like that. He doesn’t want it to be true. “What?”

“Dude, you are like super anal . You don’t exactly know the meaning of half-assed. So if you were a spy, you really fucked it up.” He spreads his arms wide, indicating everything from the three of them to the whole of Chorus. “We’re still here.”

Wash chews that over. Literally. Chewing his lip is sensation, is pain, and it makes him feel real. Reminds him that he can still feel, no matter what he’s supposed to be. He’s human.

He feels a sudden flush of sympathy for Alpha, the insistence that he was a ghost, not an AI. Wash is certain he’d laugh his ass off if he’d been around to see this, to find out that Agent Washington was just the same as him. Agent Washington, Karma’s bitch.

“Suddenly being a ghost does sound like a better prospect,” he says finally, managing a tiny, ragged smile. 

Tucker snorts. “Oh man, not this again. Epsilon would have… have…”  
There’s a shadow in Tucker’s eyes for a moment. Wash can see the bob of his throat as he swallows, and he reaches out to pat his hand awkwardly. Would he have done that before? Would the real Wash have done that? Even such a small gesture he can’t help but second guess. 

“Epsilon would have made my life hell if he’d known,” Wash says quickly, before the rapidly growing silence can drown them. It’s apparently the right thing to say because Tucker nods.

“Hell yeah he would.”

Epsilon’s loss is still a gaping wound, clinging to them like so much meat and gristle. Wash feels guilty about not being able to help them, for not getting there faster. Feel guilty for not feeling worse, and guilty for the fledgling grief he does feel, because what right does he have when the relationship between himself and Epsilon was uncomfortable at best? And now this. It feels like spite, asking them to care about him when they lost a friend.

“I’m-“ he begins, but the words stick in his throat, not that he fully knows what he was going to say. Comfort is foreign to him, for all that he’s been called upon to do it more often since joining the Blues. 

He’s saved from it by Tucker’s interruption. “Just means I’m gonna have to pick up the slack, doesn’t it, Agent Calculator.” His smirk has a tired, bitter edge, but it’s genuine, and seeing it makes relief flood through Wash.

“Just what I need,” he says, giving Tucker a sour look that makes his smirk brighten into a shit-eating grin.

“Hell yeah it is. Can’t let you take shit too seriously.”

“There’s a lot to consider,” Wash begins, an attempt to return to his concerns, but it’s half hearted. He doesn’t want to think about this. He wants to pretend that this never happened. Ignorance, in this case, is bliss.

“And we’ll help you,” Tucker says. “Well, I will. The Reds will whine and bitch about Blue-team problems, but what’s new there?”

“I will help too,” Caboose says, sounding put out at Tucker. 

It makes Wash smile and he reaches out to pat Caboose’s shoulder. “I know you will buddy.” 

He can’t ignore the warmth that fills him, the way his heart beats a little faster. And maybe it’s just false feedback from some unknown subroutine, but right now it sure as hell feels real.


End file.
